Wednesday, December 28, 2011

christmas just keeps getting "funner"!



Ah, yet another great holiday! Growing up as a kid, I've always enjoyed the holiday season. I couldn't imagine loving this holiday even more until Matthew came along. Last year he was of course too young to care about presents and therefore barely touched any. This year, he's still too young to understand but he's more interested...in the wrapping paper that is! He could careless what's inside! It's the outside that matters to him! He enjoys ripping the wrapping paper as he's been practicing tearing up tissue paper all over the place. The up side, I guess would be that he's building on his fine motor skills! Oh the mess!

This Christmas is by far the best! I used to fill the space under the tree with all the presents I secretly bought for myself. This year was totally different. I even forgot to get myself a "just in case I don't like any of my gifts" gift. Instead, I had only filled it with all these goodies that I found online for Matthew. After all, it's ALL ABOUT HIM NOW!

Matthew was great with the Christmas tree. At first, he barely paid any attention to this "thing" in the living room. As the weeks went on (we put up our tree right after Remembrance Day every year) he started to explore. At first he would poke at the branches, then worked up the courage to grab things from the tree. James was smart and decided to only hang up our homemade decorations made from felt...or was he just being lazy?!?! Matthew really enjoys the Christmas lights on trees and have managed not to tear the tree apart or any other tree that he sees!

I just realized that we hadn't taken many pictures of the holidays :( But here's a couple of the kiddies at our annual Christmas dinner at Allan's.

Merry Christmas to all! Love us!

adventures of matt matt and monkey!






Ms. Ly, one of Matthew's first teachers (the other one is Ms. Mabel Lam) made this beautiful hand-knit monkey for Matthew's first birthday. With Christmas approaching, Ms. Ly encouraged a meaningful, handmade gift from Matthew. She didn't care much for store bought or generic gift. All she wanted was just one picture of Matthew holding the monkey that she had taken her time making for him. So Matthew and I put our heads together and decided to create a whole book from iphotos with our new Mac! With weeks of hard work of posing with Monkey on outings and activities at home, a book was magically created! (Thanks, apple for creating such an easy app for mommy to use!) Here are some pics from this awesome book!

Friday, November 18, 2011

happy second halloween!






Since the weather was nice and we don't know what next year's weather will be, we decided to do the traditional door to door trick-or-treating in my brother's neighbourhood. It was fun watching Clayton and Matthew climb the stairs, knock on the door, and collect their treats. Once the treat drops, they would check to ensure their goodies were safely in their bags. So cute!

Happy first birthday!




Happy first birthday, baby boy! We thank you for the best year ever so far! Can't wait to see what you have in store for us :)

What a difference a year makes...or two!

This new blog definitely confirms exactly my first sentence from my first blog entry; I'm not a blogger! But a special someone has enticed me to blog and these memories will be all for him :) We love you lots, Matt Matt!

Since our wonderful Europe trip - part 2 December 2009 - we now have expanded our family. Our beautiful boy was conceived in Europe (we think it might have been from our stop in London but who knows?!?!). Matthew was born on September 6, 2010. He was adamant on his early arrival (9 days early). My water broke at 11:30pm on September 5. As James had just hit the sack, I woke him up with all the commotion (plus I needed help to get on the toilet!) Then we sanitized (of course!), repacked our overnight hospital bag, planned where we were going to have our last breakfast before the little guy came, took a shower...By 3:00am we were at the hospital! After reading many books, talking to other expert parents, and from our birth trainer, we were expecting about a good 16 hours before we got to meet Matthew. But boy, was he determined to meet us as soon as possible! By the time we were admitted to Emergency, I was 4 centimetres dialated. By the time I got wheel chaired up to our brand new, private Cedar room (equipped with its own toilet and bathtub!) at Women's, I was 9 cms! I was already pushing naturally when I demanded to be given the drugs! I wasn't planning on being a hero! The doctors were quite hesitant to drug me up but they finally gave in. Matthew was born by 6:30am. He would have came earlier, but sorry Matthew, mama needed the drugs!!!

We stayed at the hospital for one night and was quite determined to "get back to reality" so we asked to be checked out. Luckily James was able to get a month off so to spend Matthew's first 30 days together. And luckily for James, he actually slept way more during that first month than ever! Arghhh!!!